Demand for displays with heightened performance has increased with the development of smart phones, high-definition televisions, as well as other consumer electronic devices. The growing popularity of virtual reality and augmented reality systems, particularly those using head-mounted displays (“HMDs”), has further increased such demand. Virtual reality systems typically envelop a wearer's eyes completely and substitute a “virtual” reality for the physical reality in front of the wearer, while augmented reality systems typically provide a semi-transparent or transparent overlay of one or more screens in front of a wearer's eyes such that a physical view is augmented with additional information, and mediated reality systems may similarly present information to a viewer that combines real-world elements with virtual elements. In many virtual reality and augmented reality systems, the movement of a wearer of such a head-mounted display may be tracked in various manners, such as via sensors in the head-mounted display and/or external to it, in order to enable the images being shown to reflect user movements.
However, such head-mounted displays, with reduced distance between a viewer's eye and the display and often with a fully obscured field of view, typically have complex performance requirements for optical lens in ways that are difficult to satisfy, let alone to do so at cost-effective levels, and other devices using displays with optical lens may have similar problems. In addition, manufacturing of such head-mounted displays can be difficult and costly, such as due to challenges that include precise manufacturing tolerance requirements and limitations in existing mass production capabilities. Accordingly, needs exist for improved techniques for using optical lens and for manufacturing head-mounted displays and other assemblies of one or more optical lens with additional components, including the need to correct for distortions from the optical lens and to compensate for imperfections in such assemblies.